What Really Matters

Friends,

The excerpt for this week is from the Sounds True interview with Rachel Macy Stafford entitled, The Soul Shift to What Really Matters. Stafford is a New York Times-bestselling author of the books Hands Free Mama, Only Love Today, and Live Love Now. She’s a certified special education teacher whose personal strategies are universal invitations to embrace life with urgency and cultivate connection despite the distractions of our culture. And with Sounds True, she’s published a new book, it’s called Soul Shift: The Weary Human’s Guide to Getting Unstuck and Reclaiming Your Path to Joy.

“Tami Simon: To learn about you, I went to your website About Me: “If you want to know me, let me tell you what really matters to me.” Let’s talk about what really matters to you.
RMS: What I want to know when I meet someone, it’s not the superficial details about their lives. I want to know what makes you feel alive? Because when we really want that true connection, we have to just cut through the superficial stuff. So if I want people to know who I am, I want them to know those sacred parts of me. What really matters….”

“If the you of five years ago doesn’t consider the you of today a heretic, then you are not growing spiritually.” Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton

Merton

Everything in your story is constantly changing, including the story you tell about who you are.

Don Miguel Ruiz

“When the Buddha taught, he … taught that there is a kind of innocent misunderstanding that we all share, something that can be turned around, corrected, and seen through, as if we were in a dark room and someone showed us where the light switch was. It isn’t a sin that we are in the dark room. It’s just an innocent situation, but how fortunate that someone shows us where the light switch is.” Pema Chodron

Chodron

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow

“Let me be Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Mohammedan, or Sufi; I care not what my religion, my race, my creed, or my color be, if only I can win my way to Thee! But let me be none of these, if it enmesh me in labyrinthine ways of religious formalities. Let me travel the royal road of realization which leads to Thee.” Paramhansa Yogananda

Yogananda

Truth, or awakening, is simply the recognition of what is already perfectly in place. It is not a doctrine and it is not a creation. It is the most profound and joyous discovery a human being will make. Mooji

Mooji

“Throw off all thought of imaginary things and stand firm in that which you are.” Kabir

Kabir

“The power of the words I AM can change how you see yourself and how you see others. We have been conditioned to believe that who we are is ordinary—that who we are is what we have, what we do, what people think of us, what we own, and none of this is who we really are. Who we are is infinite light divine creation, and that creation is within all of us.” Wayne Dyer

Dyer

“If you do not ask yourself what it is you know, you will go on listening to others and change will not come because you will not hear your own truth.” St. Bartholomew

St. Bartholomew

“We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.”
The Talmud

Talmud

“The lamps are different, but the light is the same.” Rumi

Rumi

Prayer of all healers and lightworkers:
“I am here only to be truly helpful. I am here to represent Him Who sent me. I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.” ACIM

A Course of Miracles

May my focus on the light within be as dedicated as the attention my dog gives to his tennis ball. Unknown

Dog Devotion

“We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us, and make us kinder. You always have the choice.”
H.H. the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama

“I believe that appreciation is a holy thing – that when we look for what’s best in a person… we are participating in something sacred.” Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers